Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Apple, Attitude & Aptitude, Cars, Colleagues, Craft, Culture, Customer Service, Emotion, Experience, Fake Attitude, Japan, Luxury, Marketing, Mercedes, Money, Packaging, Resonance, Respect
Over the years I’ve written a lot about brands who spend time and money ensuring their customers feel they’ve purchased something of significantly greater value than the functional cost of the item they’ve purchased.
The original ‘brand experience’ as it were.
There’s Tiffany with their iconic ‘little blue box’.
There’s Apple with their packaging and attention to detail.
Hell, there’s even Absolut with their special edition bottles – though I accept that’s more a satisfying novelty than something that builds real additional value for the brand.
But what I find interesting is for all the talk of ‘brand experience’, most brands – except those truly in the luxury space – suck at it. And that’s not counting the masses of brands who don’t even bother with it – often believing their customers should consider themselves fortunate for owning whatever it is they’ve just handed over their cash to buy.
But that aside … the problem with a lot of ‘brand experience’ is it’s starting point is the cost to do it, not the emotion they ignite because of it – so we end up with countless Temu versions of whatever it is they want to do or what they think people want to get.
Now I am not saying that these approaches don’t work or aren’t liked, but we end up in parity status very quickly – which has the result of completely nullifying whatever ‘value’ you hoped you would get from it in the first place.
The reality is experience is less about what you do and how you do it …
Not just for distinctiveness.
Not just for memorability.
But because it conveys what you value and the standards you keep.
This should be obvious as hell – but the problem is, when companies evaluate it against the cost – or time – many view it as an expense rather than an investment in their brand and customer relationship, so before you know it, they strip things back to its most basic form.
It’s why I love how Japanese brands tend to approach brand experience.
As a society, care and attention seem to be built into the DNA.
You just have to see how they package anything to realise they – if anything – over engineer brand experience.
It’s a culture that places high importance on standards, respect and consistency – which is why I like this video of someone picking up their new Lexus car.
On one level, it’s not that different to a lot of car manufacturers around the world who place a bow or blanket over a car when it’s about to be picked up, however when they do it – you know the amount of effort involved in executing is minimal, whereas this – whether part of a fixed process or not – requires commitment and time.
Is this overkill?
Yep.
Is this more culturally influenced than category?
Undoubtedly.
And is the whole thing a bit awkward?
For many, it absolutely would be.
However, the point of the Lexus example is less about what they do and more a case of showing a brand who are committed to expressing who they are and who they’re for – because where brand experience is concerned, too many companies approach this key part of the ‘sales process’ with passive energy whereas Japan is almost aggressive in ensuring its point of view in expressed in an active and engaged manner.
I’ve written quite a lot about AI – specifically, how the worrying elements of it are less about the tech and more about the people behind it.
But that doesn’t take away it has incredible applications and possibilities – that is, if companies stop using it simply to optimize their profits by reducing headcount, despite the fact they continually bang on about how ‘their staff are their greatest asset’.
That said, this post isn’t going to head into a rant – don’t get me wrong, it could … but it’s Tuesday and we all could do with a bit of calm.
So with that, look at this …
That’s my beloved Rosie, fast asleep with my beloved Bonnie.
Except Rosie has sadly passed and Bonnie wasn’t even alive when that happened.
And yet, AI helped make it true.
Sure, the image could have also been created with photoshop – but I’m crap with that, whereas this just required me to upload some photos and express my dream and ‘voila’ … something I wish could have happened [even though it wouldn’t, even if they were both alive and well] did.
Kinda.
I love it.
And while I know the image isn’t really real, my emotions are …
It blows my mind how we – as an industry – don’t talk about that very much.
Instead we bang on about efficiencies, technologies, images … manifested in recreating what has gone before in an attempt to show how smart we are, without realizing it really shows we’re a bit stupid.
Yes, AI will change many industries.
Yes, AI will allow many efficiencies.
But it also allows us to make impossible, more accessible.
Not simply in terms of what we can see or do … but also, what we can feel.
Filed under: Comment
… is it ‘you look like Gary V’ bad?
No, I didn’t think so, so consider yourself far more fortunate than me.
I will be spending the rest of the day looking up the finest South Korean plastic surgeons.
Or – for a cheaper alternative – where the nearest kebab and doughnut shop is located, because I sure as shit didn’t look anything like Mr Nepo Baby when I was ‘big boned’.
And yes, I realise today is the beginning of the last month of 2025.
A countdown to the end of a weird year and the hope for the next one.
One I hope will be free from the health issues I’ve faced this past year.
But Forest lost and I look like Gary V in this pic … so what is there to be positive about???
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Agency Culture, Apathy, Aspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Brand Suicide, Collaboration, Colleagues, Comment, Communication Strategy, Community, Consultants, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Politics, Professionalism, Respect
I saw the below image recently and it got me thinking about how it is a perfect representation of how most – but not all – ‘multi-agency’ relationships really work.
As I said, it’s not always the case, but it increasingly feels ‘the norm’, often influenced by a procurement process that places more importance on ‘who will do the most for the least’ rather than who is best equipped to lead.
Just for the record, I’m all for collaboration.
Done properly, it is a powerful way to achieve incredible things in collapsed time.
However to stand a chance of achieving this needs a lot of careful thought and pre-planning.
For a start, you need to ensure the people in the room all have similar standards, experience and seniority or you end up only being as good as the least experienced person in attendance.
Or the loudest voice.
Too often there is a view that all you have to do is shove different organisations inside a room and tell them to get on with it.
And while companies do want the best for their clients … they all have their own agendas, definitions, remuneration structures and egos and to expect that to all be put aside because you want them to work together is naive.
It’s why curation, transparency and clarity on the ultimate goal are vital in enabling a strong outcome … but the problem is too often, collaboration is used because of timing pressures rather than seizing opportunity, which is why so much of what comes out of it feels like the worst of ‘committee thinking’.
When it works, everyone wins.
When it doesn’t, everyone – at best – stands still.
Of course, with companies increasingly turning to AI to ‘optimise’ every element of their business, the future of collaboration will be through bots rather than people. And while that may be music-to-the-ears of leaders who view employees as an frustrating expense … the result of this will be even more ‘lowest-common-denominator thinking’ because in the World of AI, everything is a summary of something else – whereas with well-run human collaboration, it doesn’t conform to where we’ve been, it builds to where we can go.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Cars, Comment, New Zealand
I’ve always found personalized number plates fascinating which is why a while back I wrote about the ones that were near where I live.
Anyway, I recently saw 2 that got me thinking …
The first was this:
There’s something epic having a number plate that turns the ‘horsepower’ conversation into ‘moopower’.
I would love to know what made them choose this.
Are they a dairy farmer?
Are they really into milk?
Are they someone the RSPCA need to be keeping a close eye on?
Not sure, but it stood out to me far more than 95% of creative designed by outsourced research systems that promote ‘brand assets’ but forget to tell people it’s only an asset if creativity makes it mean something.
The other was this …
On one hand, the introduction of the word ‘bad’ immediately has an effect on the car.
Despite being virginal white, suddenly that EV family car has a bit-of-the-badass about it.
Or it would, it the number plate wasn’t ‘BAD EV’ … which suggests the driver is aware of the negative association of the brand given their CEO, Elon, is a right-wing, Fascist prick … and either doesn’t care, or is trying to own the narrative so they can’t let someone else have a go at them.
Unfortunately for them, I don’t think either of those scenarios will work for them given Teresa – in our strat gang at Colenso – has a Tesla and despite every one of us loving her and knowing she feels a bit of the ick for driving an Elonmobile, still didn’t stop us getting her this.
Number plates. They say more about who you are than your DNA.